If Coaching Is So Powerful, Why Aren’t Principals Being Coached?

By Peter DeWitt

In most instructional coaching philosophies the teacher wants to be coached. Instructional coaching expert Jim Knight, someone I work with as an instructional coaching trainer, says that teachers should be the ones to choose to enroll with the coach. Additionally to that, those teachers should be able to choose the goal they want to work on. This initial aspect to the coaching cycle takes a lot of dialogue to get to the heart of why the goal is the best goal for them.

In those cases where a teacher doesn’t know what goal to choose but wants to do a full instructional coaching cycle, the teacher and coach co-construct the goals together. This may take a baseline observation or a teacher videotaping themselves to look at whether their engagement is authentic or compliant.

According to Knight’s research, coaching is an effective way to provide individualized professional development to teachers because those teachers who choose to be a part of the coaching program are an eager participant in the process. Coaching will help teachers retain up to 90% of what they learned, as opposed to losing 90% when they go to the typical sit-and-get professional development. Knight’s research certainly fits into the research of others who have studied professional development.

For example, Timperley et al (2007) found that the most effective professional development had the following elements.

Over a long period of time (three to five years)
Involves external experts
Teachers are deeply engaged
It challenges teachers’ existing beliefs
Teachers talk to each other about teaching
School leadership supports teachers’ opportunities to learn and provides opportunities within the school structure for this to happen

Leadership support can happen in different ways. In the best case scenario involving school leadership and teachers, a principal would suggest coaching as a way to help any teacher improve. That means teachers who may have a low level of self-efficacy (Bandura) and need assistance or a teacher who is a high flyer and can benefit from a keen eye and effective feedback.

What about principals?
If principals believe that teachers can benefit from high quality coaching, doesn’t that mean that principals can as well? I wonder how many would engage in that type of professional development? Many times the school leader believes that they are supposed to know it all, which is quite possibly why they moved to the principalship. And some principals may believe coaching is for teaching and not for them, which is an interesting dilemma when it comes to who values coaching and why. If coaches are good for teachers, shouldn’t coaching be valuable for leaders too?

There are leaders who believe that coaching can be just as important for them as it is for teachers. This is the collaborative, growth and innovative mindset leaders should have. If leaders truly believe in being collaborative, they also understand that they have a blind spot (Scharmer) which they lead from on a daily basis, and they may need outside guidance on how to get through that blind spot. For example, a possible blind spot is that they may enter into a situation with a confirmation bias that prevents them from seeing what is really happening in the classroom.

Let’s use this scenario:

A principal may enter into a classroom of a teacher that they don’t necessarily believe is a strong teacher and look for the reasons to support their bias. A coach could help principals understand that they have a bias because that coach is entering without the same confirmation bias.

Additionally, leadership coaches may help leaders understand how they can communicate better with staff, students and parents. They can even help leaders understand how to build collective teacher efficacy, which John Hattie, someone I work with as a Visible Learning trainer, has found to have an effect size of 1.57.

Practice What We Preach?
Coaching can be very beneficial. I’ve seen the benefits more now than I ever did as a principal because I have had the luxury to work with highly effective coaches around the country. They don’t want the position for status or power, but they do want to coach because they have a goal of helping their peers (build collective efficacy) at the same time they learn from those peers they work with.

The same can be done at the leadership level. Building synergy among leaders and getting them to try new strategies to build collective efficacy among their staff is something coaches can help do, and they often offer an outside perspective because they have worked with many other leaders.

We know from Knight’s research and the research of others including Timperley that professional development, and that’s what coaching is, is a lot stronger when both parties want to be a part of it. If coaching is beneficial to teachers, we can make it better for leaders as well. We just have to have the proper collaborative, growth and innovative mindset to get there.

Please click here to take a short, anonymous 4 question survey on leadership coaching?

Peter DeWitt, Ed.D. is the author of several books including Collaborative Leadership: 6 Influences That Matter Most (September, 2016. Corwin Press) where he explains self-efficacy and how to build collective teacher efficacy. Connect with Peter on Twitter.

The Unintended Consequences of Charters

By Jack McKay, Ed.D., Executive Director of the Horace Mann League of the USA

Charter schools have a unique history. The idea of charter schools arose, often with teachers’ support, in urban districts in the late 1980s and early ’90s. They were originally conceived as teacher-run schools that would serve students struggling inside the traditional system and would operate outside the reach of the administrative bureaucracy and politicized school boards.

Charters also drew on early rounds of small school experiments initiated by teachers and community activists, often as alternatives to large, struggling, high schools.

A charter school is an independently run public school granted greater flexibility in its operations, in return for greater accountability for performance. The “charter” establishing each school is a performance contract detailing the school’s mission, program, students served, performance goals, and methods of assessment.

The Charter School movement was intended to be a school where the so-called, bureaucracy of traditional public schools is eliminated, to provide a choice for students and parents, to provide a sense of competition with the public schools, improve academic outcomes, and to create an environment for creativity in instruction and organization of the school.

As the charter school initiative grew, some educational leaders became concerned that that charter school advocates were creating tiers of schools serving decidedly different populations with unequal resources. Below is a summary of the intended and resulting unintended consequences of the charter school movement.

Intended and Unintended Consequences of Charter Schools

Bureaucracy

Intention: Reduce the rules and regulations that may hinder the selection of personnel, curriculum, and methods of teaching.

Unintended Consequence: (1) resulted in a lack of due process rights of employees and students. (2) resulted in a lack of policy on the uniformity of personnel regulations, salary, and benefits. (3) Resulted in a lack of structure or procedures to resolve grievances in a fair and efficient manner.

Choice of School

Intention: Provide parents with an alternative to the traditional public school.

Unintended Consequences: (1) Resulted in a choice based on race, wealth, and/or other forms of exclusiveness rather than academics, resulting in segregated schools. (2) Created a “duel” system of schooling in the community. (3) Results in a perpetuation of a false sense populist elitism of both parents and children.

Competition

Intention: Provide a sense of competition to find better ways to improve learning.

Unintended Consequences: (1) Resulted in no evidence of the benefits of competition to promoted innovation or improved learning. (2) Resulted in a false sense of academic success based on aggressive recruitment (enrolling already talented students) and (3) Resulted in the suspension of the less able students.

Governance

Intention: Reduce the outside influence by appointing rather than electing a board.

Unintended Consequences: (1) Resulted in limited or no review of practices by an impartial board. No due process or other appeal procedures for either students or employees. (2) Resulted in a less stable, less secure and less expensive teaching staff. (3) Resulted in less experienced, less unionized and less trained and less certified than those in public schools – the Walmart strategy of low salaries, fewer benefits, no long-term career, no pension plan, nor professional commitment

Innovations in Teaching

Intention: Provide a teaching environment unhindered by structure and standards.

Unintended Consequences: (1) Resulted in no evidence to show any significant innovations shared or integrated into the public schools. (2) Resulted in the reverse – most innovations in teaching and learning developed and implemented in the public school are adopted by the charter school. (3) Resulted in unregulated charters that provide the teachers and resources for a few at the expense of the many. (4) Resulted in the draining of the talents, resources, and energy needed to continuous improvement of the public schools where 95 percent of the students attend.

Innovation in Organization

Intention: Provide an environment that nurtures different ways of organizing the school’s learning areas.

Unintended Consequences: (1) Resulted in few, if any innovative or organization practice has been proven to be an improvement over the current practices in the public schools. (2) Resulted in charter school practices being more regressive in dealing with instruction and classroom management. (2) Nowhere have charters produced a template for effective districtwide reform or equity.

Academic Improvement

Intention: Provide strategies and practices that result in higher academic achievement.

Unintended Consequences: (1) Resulted in no major research that indicates that charter schools have improved the achievement of students during the last 15 years. (2) Resulted in most charters avoid accepting the less academically able, the physically impaired, second language students, or the children of poverty. (3) Resulted in most charters being selective in recruiting the most talented and most motivated learners from the public schools. (4) Resulted in the myth that charters do better than public schools – reality is that when eliminating the bottom half by selective recruiting and timely suspensions, test scores will go up.

Academic Accountability

Intention: Provide methods to hold teachers and schools accountable for academic results.

Unintended Consequence: (1) Resulted in privately operated charters having no obligation to show the effectiveness of teachers nor schools. Studies have found that there no reliable way to measure value-added student achievement.

Fiscal Accountability

Intention: Provide practices that allocate resources that that better address the learning of students.

Unintended Consequences: (1) Resulted in privately operated charters having arbitrarily set salaries, bonuses, and benefits. (2) Resulted in accountability is to the stockholders, rather than to students, taxpayers, and patrons. (3) Resulted in investigations indicating high levels of fraud, profiteering due to a lack of transparency, mismanagement with no oversight. (4) Resulted in the higher percent of special needs students left in public schools (5) Resulted in a higher cost-per-student in public schools and lower cost-per-student in charters.

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Intention: A different learning experience based on the freedom to innovate. An alternative to the public school. One that places greater emphasis on academics and strong discipline.

Unintended Consequences: (1) Resulted in skimming already talented students from public schools. (2) While public schools welcome all students. Charters are selective in recruiting students – often using skimming strategies to recruit talented students and motivated parents from public schools. (3) Resulted in a segregated school-based open an elitist and populist sense of entitlement for children. (4) Resulted with the bottom line logic, the market will do for education what it has done for housing, health care, and employment: create fabulous profits and opportunities for a few, and unequal access and outcomes for the many.

Strategic Communications for Leading Change

by Connie R Kindler, Director of Professional Development
Pennsylvania Association of School Administrators.

“Leaders anticipate the future. They stand at the edge of the known world, patrolling the border between “now” and “next” to spot trends. They help others see the future, too, guiding people through the unexpected and inspiring them to long for a better reality. The leader’s role, your role, is to light the way for your team through empathetic communications – to be a torchbearer.” (Illuminate, Duarte and Sanchez)

Those who rise to school leadership usually do so because they have demonstrated an ability to inspire and guide others. They almost innately understand when there is a need for transformation, as well as the path to achieving it. However, sometimes their efforts are derailed when those that they lead do not understand or support the change. Nancy Duarte, the CEO of Duarte Design, and Patty Sanchez, the firm’s Chief Strategy Officer, studied Starbucks, Interface, Rackspace, Chick-fil-A and other companies to create the largest design firm in Silicon Valley. In Illuminate: Ignite Change Through Speeches, Stories, Ceremonies and Symbols, they identify five distinct stages (Dream, Leap, Fight, Climb and Arrive) of the change process when strategic communications from the organization’s leader are imperative. To create a culture changing movement, they recommend using speeches, stories, ceremonies, and symbols at critical junctures during the five stages:

• Speeches can distance others from “what is” by identifying “what could be.” Duarte and Sanchez advise the leader to directly address the anticipated thoughts, emotions and reactions of those impacted, to persuasively contrast the current situation with the desired one, and to clearly state the call to action.

• Stories are more easily remembered and shared. To connect hearts and minds, they propose interjecting stories into speeches about those who have tried, failed and overcome.

• Ceremonies lead to collective emotions and create commitment. They suggest facilitating ceremonies to mark important transitions.

• Integrating symbols creates solidarity. To create solidarity, they endorse the integration of symbols that represent the desired thoughts, feelings, and values of your end result, and to share these proudly throughout the process.

As you ponder the changes that you envision for your organization, it will be beneficial to include communication strategies recommended by Duarte and Sanchez. Chart your journey from the “Dream” to the “Arrive” stages and mark the important milestones when momentum can be created through these strategic communications.

• In preparation for your opening day remarks, directly address anticipated resistance, develop a persuasive contrast of the current reality with the desired one, include a compelling story that illustrates the transformation, add a representative symbol, create your call to action, and demonstrate confidence and conviction. If your vision is truly “illuminated” for those that you lead, they will follow you as you carry the torch to your destination.

Leadership and the Inverted “U”

By Jack McKay

Interest in the “Inverted U” was started after reading Malcom Gladwell’s recent book, David and Galiath (2013). Gladwell presents the case that “too much of a good thing” as it relates to class size. His point is that as the class size is lowered, achievement is better, but only to a point. If class size becomes too small, then there is a marginal or negative effect on learning. Other words, “too much of a good thing can result in a negative result.”

Is it practical to apply the “Inverted U” theory to other educationally related issues?

The “Inverted U Theory,” developed in 1908 by Yerkes and Dobson as a way of explaining that arousal (e.g., motivation or stress) increases to an optimal level of performance. However, if arousal (e.g., motivation and stress) continues to increase beyond the optimal level, then performance will begin to deteriorate.

Researchers has found that different tasks require different levels of motivation for optimal performance. For example, difficult or intellectually demanding tasks may require a lower level of motivation (to facilitate concentration), whereas tasks demanding stamina or persistence may be performed better with higher levels of motivation.

The effect of task difficulty led to the hypothesis that the Yerkes–Dodson Law can be decomposed into two distinct factors as in a bathtub curve. The upward part of the inverted U can be thought of as the energizing. The downward part is caused by the negative effects of motivation (or stress) on cognitive processes like attention, e.g., tunnel vision, memory and problem-solving.

Following are a series of charts using the “inverted curve” to show that while the intentions of a school reform, designed by policy makers as well intended, are now resulting in unintended consequences. Over the past 10 to 20 years, public school leaders and advocates have been presented with a series of efforts to improve student achievement. These range from (a) increased funding by corporations and foundations intended to change the public schools, (b) increased federal mandates and programs to improve accountability, (c) increase alternative means of providing education in a community through privatization and competition and (d) evaluating teachers to improve instruction and remove the incompetent. While noble in appearance, in each case there are unintended consequences –other words “too much of a good thing.”

Federal state intervention Accountability (Testing)

Most notably, the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) act, passed by Congress in 2002, was designed to be a flagship federal aid program for disadvantaged students. The NCLB supports standards-based education reform based on the premise that setting high standards and establishing measurable goals can improve individual outcomes in education. The intended motivation was to hold educators accountable by testing and rewarding those school districts that improved student performance.

The primary outcome of NCLB has been an increase in the testing of students. An ideal outcome of testing would be to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the school’s instructional practices. More specifically, the intent would be to provide the faculty with diagnostic information about their students in order to improve student achievement.

However, the unintended consequence of testing has been the trend of teaching the content of the test, thereby reducing or channeling the curriculum. Content not included on the test, such as the arts, music, physical education are reduced or deleted from the instructional program. Further, with the testing comes the unreliable comparison of teachers, schools, systems and communities. With the emphasis on test results published in the media, there is a tendency to judge the effectiveness of the teachers and the school system based solely on outcomes rather than other social and economic issues facing influencing the incoming students.

Finally, there is the pheonomen called Campbell’s Law: “The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor.” Campbell’s Law explains why there have been a number of scandals related to testing (Houston ISD 2003, 2011 and 2013, Atlanta (2010), Washington, DC 2013)).

Privatization and Competition for students

Privatization is intended to improve the efficiency of the organization, in this case, public schools. The underlying idea is that in a democratic society, a person should have a choice and also where to have their children attend school. Privatization is an attempt to increase the quality of education through increase the management of scares resources by using the practices and procedures successfully used in the private sector. It is believed that through privatization, the following will occur: (1) increasing competency-based teaching, (2) increasing the time of self-learning via technology, (3) greater use of group learning, (4) decreasing the teacher-dominated learning practices, and (5) practice continuous evaluation through the use of testing and monitoring student progress through the use of technology.

However, privatization has resulted in the increasing selectivity of the inputs (the capability of the students), inappropriate rankings of schools, and diminished local control the community’s schools.

School Choice

School choice is a term or label given to a wide array of programs offering students and their families alternatives to publicly provided schools, to which students are generally assigned by the location of their family residence. School choice is sold on the idea that it empowers parents to choose what is believed best for their children. Examples of school choice may involve vouchers to attend private or charter schools.

However, what school choice creates is a climate of self-interest over what might be best for other children and the long-term impact on the community. Unintended consequences of school choice range from creating a dual educational system to segregating the community on social and economic lines. Further consequences are increasing inequities in educational opportunity, narrowing the curriculum to ensure higher test results and competitive advantage for recruitment, along with selective recruiting efforts to attract only the most capable students – skimming the public schools. Finally, there is no reliable evidence that the charter school experience, with less bureaucratic control, improves student achievement nor has led to any significant innovations of instruction and organization.

Foundation and Corporate Grants

Foundation and corporate funding of public education can be positive or negative, depending on the purpose or objective of the contributor. Usually, the motive of a foundation or corporation appears to be holistic, but the unintended consequences ranging from the integrity of the school’s mission or to the research outcomes. Foundations like Gates and Walmart have invested heavily in the areas of accountability. These efforts related to imposing a business model of measuring outcomes based on controlling the incoming raw materials – contrary to the public school model of accepting all students, regarding of social class and level of preparation for schooling.

Beyond the corporate model of controlling inputs is the undue influence on decision-making on the local school board, the dependence on outside funding sources, as well as the potential increase in the inequity of the distribution of funds within and through a school system and state.

Somewhat related is the integrity of educational association aligned public education. Once respected national educational associations like the National Education Association (NEA), the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the Association for School Curriculum and Instruction (ASCD) and the publications like the Chronicle of Higher Education and Education Week, are now facing an integrity issue related to their editorials and research. Even the U.S. Department of Education, under the leadership of Arne Duncan, has been strongly implicated with ties to the Gates Foundation, thereby creating an integrity issue with motives at the federal policy level.

The Gates Foundation, for example, has significantly changed the level of influence over legislative policies about education, e.g., testing, teacher evaluation, school organization and merit pay. By buying legislation, the desired change in more likely to last and feel more like routine governance.

Teacher Evaluation Process

The reform efforts surrounding teacher evaluation have been related to value added measures (VAM). VAM are designed to estimate the teacher’s effect on student learning. Policy makers believe that emphasis on the impact of a teacher on student learning, over a period of time, will improve the quality of the teaching profession. A number of prominent researchers have concluded there is no evidence to support value added measures as a reliable indicator of successful teaching. Research evidence suggests that the unintended consequences of VAM are such things as deteriorating collaboration, increased turnover of faculty, and an increase of administrative time to carry out the related observations and documentation relative to improved instruction. A complimentary motive of teacher evaluations is to reward those outstanding teachers with higher salaries – merit pay.

There is no reliable evidence to suggest that greater emphasis on the teacher evaluation process motivates teachers to improve and therefore paid a higher salary. Regarding merit pay, there is considerable research that suggests that monetary rewards (merit pay) are not valid incentives to improve performance in a cognitive activity such as teaching. In teaching, where thousand of decisions are made about classroom management, instructional practices and diagnostic are made daily, altruism trumps money (Heyman and Arueky) .

There is no reliable evidence to suggest that greater emphasis on the teacher evaluation process motivates teachers to improve and therefore paid a higher salary. Regarding merit pay, there is considerable research that suggests that monetary rewards (merit pay) are not valid incentives to improve performance in a cognitive activity such as teaching. In teaching, where thousands of decisions are made about classroom management, instructional practices and diagnostic are made daily, altruism trumps money (Heyman and Arueky).

Summary
As stated, “too much of a good thing” can result in some unintended consequences. While well intended, some of the recent efforts to reform public education by zealous reformers have not developed as planned. Most efforts to improve the public schools have been directed towards the management of resources (e.g., charters and vouchers) and personnel (e.g., teachers and students) and placed an emphasis on the outputs of the education process (e.g., testing and evaluation). At the same time, the inputs have been ignored (e.g., adequate funding and the readiness of students entering school).

Why have the well-intended reforms been less than successful? First, reforms like increased testing, school choice, and teacher accountability, have little or no research data to justify the time and effort. Testing places emphasis on scripting and passing, not learning. School choice places emphasis on student recruitment, not on inclusiveness and innovation. Teacher accountability places emphasis on competition and short-term rewards, not on collaboration and creativity.

References

Psychology Arousal – The Inverted Curve, by H. Chambers, http://pe-arousal.blogspot.com/2011/09/inverted-u-theory.html

Yerkes, R. M. & Dodson, J. D. (1908). The Relation of Strength of Stimulus to Rapidity of Habit-Formation. Journal of Comparative Neurology and Psychology, 18, 459-482.

Heyman James and Ariely, Dan, Effort for Payment: A tale of two markets. 2004, American Psychological Society. http://web.mit.edu/ariely/www/MIT/Papers/2markets.pdf

The results, recently published in Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, show remarkably clear conclusions. In each of the conditions, all participants who were reminded of money demonstrated behaviors consistent with decreased interpersonal skills and increased personal performance. http://psychcentral.com/news/2008/07/10/money-influences-behavior-more-than-we-think/2586.html

Right Way to End the Meeting

by Paul Axtell

HBR TOOLS FOR BETTER MEETINGS

A common complaint among managers is that the conversations they have with employees aren’t producing results: “We keep talking about the same issue over and over, but nothing seems to ever happen!” That’s because most managers are missing a vital skill: the ability to deliberately close a conversation. If you end a conversation well, it will improve each and every interaction you have, ultimately creating impact.

Meetings are really just a series of conversations—an opportunity to clarify issues, set direction, sharpen focus, and move objectives forward. To maximize their impact, you need to actively design the conversation. While the overall approach is straightforward— and may seem like basic stuff – not enough managers are actually doing this in practice:

Set up each conversation so that everyone knows the intended outcomes and how to participate.
Manage the conversation rigorously so that the discussion stays on track and everyone is engaged.
Close the conversation to ensure alignment, clarity on next steps, and awareness of the value created.

In my 35 years of experience as a corporate trainer, I’ve found that closure is more often than not the missing link between meetings and impact. Without it, things can be left unsaid, unchallenged, unclear, and/or uncommitted. Each agenda item should be considered incomplete unless it is wrapped up in a thoughtful, deliberate way.

I recently worked with a university president who requested that I come in to help with some leadership training. When I asked why the training was needed, he told me how he had been working with a group of faculty members who were trying to restart a journalism school that had been disbanded many years before due to budget cuts. In the initial meeting, the president promised he would do everything he could to support their efforts.

But now, two years after convening and chartering the group, no visible progress had been made. The president felt it was because of a leadership gap, but I offered a dfferent perspective. I told him, “You don’t have a journalism school because you didn’t close that first meeting properly, and you didn’t follow up. If you had wrapped up that first meeting more thoroughly and then met with that group every two weeks, you would probably have what you wanted today.” It really is that simple.

To deliberately close a conversation, consider these ve essential tasks:

Check for completion: If you move to the next topic too quickly, people will either cycle back
to the current topic later or leave the meeting unclear or misaligned. You should ask: “Is there anything else someone needs to say or ask before we change topics or adjourn the meeting?” If the university president had asked this question and waited patiently, lingering concerns or questions might have arisen and been dealt with right o the bat.

Check for alignment: If someone can’t live with the decisions being made in the meeting, or the potential outcome of those decisions, you need to ask that person what it would take to get him or her on board. People prefer to be united with the group, and if they aren’t, there’s a reason behind it that needs to be surfaced. Asking the question, “Is everyone OK with where we ended up?” will surface questions or concerns so that they can be resolved as soon as possible.

Agree on next steps: Getting firm, clear commitments is the primary way to ensure progress between meetings. In order for a conversation to lead to action, specific commitments must be made. Progress depends on clearly stating what you will do by when and asking others to do the same. To maintain the momentum of any project, nail down specific commitments and deadlines, and then follow up often. The question here is: “What exactly will we do by our next meeting to ensure progress?” In the example of the journalism school, nothing happened because there was never an action plan agreed upon with next steps, rm timelines, and individual responsibilities clearly de ned.

Reflect on the value of what you accomplished:

This is one of the most powerful acknowledgments and appreciation tools. People rarely state the value created by a conversation and therefore lose a wonderful opportunity to validate both the conversation and the individuals in it. Here’s an example:

Let’s say you’re the university president from the example above, listening to several faculty presentations for the new journalism school. After the first presentation, you say, “That was good.” What if, instead, you said, “Let me tell you the ve things I’m taking away from your presenta- tion.” Which do you think has more impact?

Check for acknowledgments: Did anyone contribute to the conversation in a way that needs to be highlighted? While you don’t want to use acknowledgment and appreciation so frequently that it becomes a commodity with no value, at times someone’s questions or remarks do help provide the tipping point that turns an ordinary conversation into an extraordinary one—and that’s worth acknowledging.

Imagine the impact if the university president had taken the time to use these last two elements—sharing the value he was taking away from the meeting and acknowledging a few of the participants. Doing so would have reinforced the conversations that occurred, supported the people in the meeting, and encouraged every- one’s desire to produce the expected results.

As a manager, you should consider improving your meeting skills to be a top priority. Not only will it make you a more respected leader, but your sta members will become more engaged participants, as well. Try spending the next three weeks working on closing every conversation in a deliberate, thoughtful way. You’ll be surprised to see an immediate impact on how and when things get done.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Paul Axtell has more than 35 years of experience as a personal e ectiveness consultant and corporate trainer. He has spent the last 15 years designing and leading programs that enhance individual and group performance within large organizations. He is also the author of the recent book,

Meetings Matter: 8 Powerful Strategies for Remarkable Conversations (Jackson Creek Press, 2015).

Adapted from “The Right Way to End a Meeting,” posted on HBR.org on March 11, 2015.

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The Right Way to End a Meeting

HBR Tools | Better Meetings 20

Favorite Superintendent Quotes

Some of my favorite quotes:

1. The public school is the greatest discovery made by man. Horace Mann

2. Education is best provided in schools embracing children of all religious, social, and ethnic backgrounds. Horace Mann

 3. A teacher who is attempting to teach without inspiring the pupil with a desire to learn is hammering on cold iron.     Horace Mann

 4. Never look down to test the ground before taking your next step; only he who keeps his eye fixed on the far horizon will find the right road.   Dag Hammarskjold

5. You have never done enough, so long as it is still possible that you have something of value to contribute. Dag Hammarskjold.

The following are quotes offered by school superintendents:

1.   Don't mistake the edge of the rut for the horizon.

2.You are only as good as your teaching staff.

3. Introducing myself by saying 'I am the current superintendent of ...

4. Even if you can successfully swim against an angry tide as a school leader, you will be criticized for not walking on water.

5. All will be right with the world when the military has to hold bake sales to buy bombs and schools have all the money they need.

 6. A (school) Board's perception of reality is reality; regardless of the facts.

1st Corollary: The function of the superintendent is to make the real- ity and the facts fit as closely as possible.

2nd Corollary: Any administrator/ s tenure in a district is directly related to how close the facts and reality correlate.

7. Being a superintendent is a fine line between leading a parade and being run out of town by an unhappy mob.

8. The key to leading a public school system is hiring great people and keeping everything that might prevent them from doing their job out of the way.

9. Don't tell me what you value, tell me what you do and I will tell you what you value.

Communication Tips for Principals

on the NSPRA site.

In more than 25 years of working with schools in a teaching and administrative capacity, one truth just about always rings true – the principal’s style of leadership and communication is the key in making or breaking the image of the school and the school’s commitment to communication. Experienced principals set the tone, model the commitment, set standards, hold staff accountable to those standards, and become the director of first impressions for their buildings. They teach and coach about the communication commitment and provide resources in any way they can
to help improve communication among parents, staff, and students.

Effective principals practice a transparent leadership style, admit that their school isn’t perfect, and include staff and parents in a mission to make the school as great as it can be.

You cannot be a great leader without communication. Clear, positive communication with a focus on kids, teaching, and learning builds confidence in you and your school. And please remember that you cannot delegate confidence-building. NSPRA completes a process called a communication audit for a number of school districts each year. The following findings are common threads we use when we talk to parents and other community leaders about district and school building communication:

School newsletters are the most read vehicles for parents.
Teachers are the key credible influentials when talking about your school.
Parents are less concerned about overall national or state test scores than most of us think.
Parents are more concerned about the progress,accomplishments, and challenges of their children.
The schools are primarily judged on how their staff and principals interact with students and
parents.

Communication maxims often help relate some of the rules of the game. Here are some you should know:

People techniques (relationships) beat paper just about every time.
Healthy, respected relationships are critical to communication.
Perception is reality. (The objective is to make them the same.)
First graders like surprises; your superintendent doesn’t.
An invitation to everyone is an invitation to no one.
The best way to eat crow is fast.
People support what they help create.
It is more important to reach the people who count than to count the people you reach.
If you believe your comments are being taken out of context, maybe you are failing to provide one.
If behavior gets us into trouble, words are not going to get us out of it.
You can fool some of the people some of the time, but you can never fool the kids.
When you create a communication void, your critics will surely fill it and flaunt it.
Rumors spread like a prairie fire and they have an annoying capacity to be seen as credible when bona-fide leadership communication is missing. Don’t create those voids.

Principals are the main creators of a culture of communication in their schools. Good, two-way communication becomes the standard when principals serve as role models, provide resources and training, and hold staff members accountable for their communication efforts and results.